Veritas
by Basia Adami
Summary: Rated for language, violence, sex (not yet anyway), and general fun. A plain Jane is unplugged and tries to develope into Veritas, her real self.
1. Default Chapter

Generic disclaimer- Things I don't own: The Matrix, its sequels, spin- offs, characters  
Things I do own: This specific story, characters who were not in the original Matrix movie but are in this story.  
Specific disclaimer- Like Sues? Tough! Dislike Sues? Tough! Oh well, I can't make everyone happy. If you have any questions about the references (usually lit) just ask.  
  
Veritas  
  
People will do anything to protect themselves from the truth. That's why so few escape. We delude ourselves with lies and ignore the obvious just to keep ourselves safe. I don't want to be safe. I'm like John the savage in Brave New World. I want to escape this mechanical emptiness. I want the grit and blood of reality. I'm an angry brain, and I want out of my vat. I want to immerge from the waters of lies and take my first real breath, ah, the air of reality in my lungs. I want to breathe. I want to dance. I want to move. I want to be.  
  
She through down her journal, flicked off her flashlight, and pulled the covers over her body in feigned sleep. She tried to control her breathing as she waited for her mother to continue down the hall to her own bedroom. It was two in the morning, and Jane knew she'd be grounded if her mother caught her awake. Grounded, hah, she'd been grounded since the day she was born. She didn't know how or why, but she knew it was true. Something in the very fabric of reality had always held her back, kept her powerless, waiting passively for an escape. Still she waited; she waited to be left alone in the dark and brought out of it. She waited with her mind open but only half conscious. She waited for her own invitation to the real world.  
She stared with a vacant expression and full mind at her computer screen until she didn't even notice how much her eyes burned. Websites, search engines, chatrooms, live journals, she read all that she could find, but none of them helped. The night seemed to drag through countless hours. Jane slipped in and out of sleep, and thus found herself either forgetting what she had just seen or reading words that had never been written.  
"None of these words are really there, just like the desk, the computer, this house, this very world. I know it. I just know it!" Her whispered words were swallowed by the eerie stillness that surrounded her.  
Text appeared on her screen. "Hello seeker."  
She typed madly. "Help me. I knew you would find me. I just knew it. Tell me the truth. I know I'm ready."  
"I will not tell you anything."  
"Yeah, I know; I have to see it. Well, show me."  
"You may later regret your haste."  
"I won't, promise. Where can I meet you?"  
"I'll find you."  
  
The proverbial light at the end of the tunnel! I see it, so close. I'm getting out of here; no more lies, no more illusions, no more average Jane. I wonder what the real world is like... Will it feel any different? Will I be able to tell beyond any doubt that it's reality? Will I ever know?  
  
"Janey, hello? You're dazing again." Her best friend waved her hand in front of Jane's face. "Wake up..."  
"I am; I'm more awake then I've ever been in my life. They're coming for me. Gah, waiting is horrible."  
"Who's coming for you?"  
"And they'll let me out of this place, this..."  
"Jane, stop. Who's coming for you?"  
"Morpheus, Neo, and Trinity."  
"Jane..." she sighed, "it's just a movie.  
"No, and I'll prove it to you."  
"How?"  
"I'll come back and free you too some day, when you're ready. Then, you'll see the world as it really is and me as I really am. Think about it Beth, to see the real world, to be the real you."  
"No one's coming for you. I'm getting really worried."  
"I'm gonna miss you, even if you are too damn logical. I don't know when I'm leaving. They'll take me away like a thief in the night like the Bible says. You'll wake up one morning, and I'll be gone. I'll be awake while you're still sleeping."  
"Look at me. Do I look asleep to you?"  
"Can't you feel it? The world has some immeasurable flaw that we can't see or touch, but I know it's there. Please, try and doubt; try and see. The Matrix has you Beth, and I don't know how to help you," Jane pleaded, the volume of her voice slightly rising with every word.  
"Hey, Matrix Girl, you at it again?" shouted someone from across the cafeteria.  
"Keep teasing me all you want you damn coppertop. Damned, that's what you are."  
"Jane, please, you're the one who needs help, not me.  
  
Gah, it's so aggravating to see only the shadows of the world but have full knowledge of their reality. I only know the light outside the cave through hearsay, but I know it's there just the same. I know the agony of Cassandra and of the poor soul who was blinded by the light and ridiculed by those who had never seen. Over 99% of the world's population accepts the Matrix. Does that make me special? Blessed or cursed? Did I choose or was I chosen? Which would make me more special?  
  
She was walking to her car in the school parking lot later that afternoon as she did every day. Even with the knowledge that she would be freed she still felt as if she were living in constant de ja vu. School, homework, Internet; everyday was exactly the same except for the occasional nights when she actually slept. Her life just felt so boring, so ordinary as she watched shadows move around her.  
Jane's phone rang. Stopping to answer it, she fished it out of the bottom of her purse.  
"Don't scream."  
She knew the voice immediately, "Morpheus?"  
The next thing she knew, she had been pulled into a passing car. She hit the leather seat and tried to contain her excitement as she reoriented herself. She frantically looked back and forth between the woman driving and the man who had pulled her into the car. She recognized them at once behind their dark sunglasses that gave them both a dark, mysterious look that Jane would kill to have. She tried to keep her cool, to be worthy of their presence. She failed.  
"Oh my God! Is that really you guys? I knew you were real, but nobody believed me. Trin, you gotta spar with me. It'll be a cat fight" Her grin grew another mile. "I bet it would really turn on ol' Neo hear"  
"Damn that movie," Trinity swore without taking her eyes off the road.  
Ashamed, Jane decided to keep to herself from then on. Bitterly she turned to the window and let her gaze wander through the traffic. Hidden by tinted windows, she peered into the cars around her. Teens in their Abercrombie T-shirts, housewives in their minivans and SUVs, a few business people in suits on late lunch breaks; she watched them, studied them.  
  
Drones, all of them... They never stop to think. If they thought at all, their faces wouldn't look nearly so vacant. All those unexamined lives, none of them are worth living isn't that right, Socrates? Should I feel sorry for them and their mundane lives? They probably just don't bother to question; they're probably too lazy to think. I'll never be like them. The world has been pressing down on me to make me conform, but I never will. I'm getting out, but if I weren't, how long would I last before becoming one of them? 


	2. II Happy Birthday

  
  
My idols are standing around me! All their duster coats and sunglasses should make me feel out of place in my school uniform, but I know I belong with them. I've known it ever since I first saw The Matrix: I'm a rebel. No, I've known it as long as I can remember; I just didn't have a name or justification for it.  
  
For the past few years I've lived in a limbo between knowing and walking the path, but it was both satisfying and hollow. I could brush everything off because it wasn't real because the world wasn't real, and I felt some how special because I knew something everyone else either didn't know or refused to believe. The more I searched for Morpheus and his crew, the more I understood that I was living a lie but also helping to perpetuate that lie through my silence. By living in the Matrix I was helping the machines instead of bringing about the destruction of the Matrix. I could very well have been dooming humanity through my complacency. Is that how all those people feel who shout about the end of the world? I'm ready for the end of the world. Bring it on.  
  
Morpheus sat before her, his presence inspiring her with his strength, dignity, and warmth. He wasn't exactly how she had expected him to be, but definitely not warm. He seemed to be holding back a smile behind his emotionless exterior. Of course, Jane knew that she would be happy if she were about to free someone. She would try to hide it so as not to sway that person's choice, but inside, behind the sunglasses, she would be beaming just like Morpheus.  
  
His warmth showed most strongly when he called her by name, Veritas. He pronounced every letter perfectly; they slipped effortlessly from his mouth. Only then did she feel like Veritas was her real self and not just some screen name. Veritas was her name and not a word that seemed to embody that certain, intangible coolness that she wished she had. Veritas, it sounded so poised and dignified, but also enlightened and even unyielding, but dignified most of all.  
  
She tried to mirror his calm dignity, but her excitement showed clearly. Jane sweated and shook while she stood in absolute awe as she wastched Trinity and Neo set up equipment. She tried to study their work, to take mental note of every detail of the process, but they were working too quickly while her brain wasn't operating fast enough. Everything just blurred together until that long awaited moment when Morpheus stretched out his hands before her. Each offered a pill that seemed to glow. She reached for the red one without hesitation, her hands pawing greedily as if it were candy and she a small child.  
  
Morpheus closed his hand around the pill. "You need to think this over. You will never make a more important decision, and once it is done, you can never go back."  
  
Red pill, blue pill, no decision there. This is my one chance to escape, and I'm taking it. I'll die if I linger any longer. My spirit is rotting here, atrophying from being held captive so long. I've out-grown mommy's womb; its time to be born.  
  
"Happy birthday to me," she whispered before popping the red pill into her mouth. It left a bitter taste, but she never noticed.  
  
Her reflection slithered off the mirror and devoured her. She was swallowed up by a metallic chill. It ate her finger first, starting where her own image had leapt through the looking glass and landed on her skin. It slid over her body and through it in a perverse sort of osmosis until she was no longer herself, and her reflection no longer showed an image. Instead she wore a new skin of melted silver and chrome until she melted into oblivion.  
  
Holy shit! 


	3. III Good Morning

_My_ _Barbie "We Girls Can Do Anything" Game, I got it for Christmas when I was four. Funny how "anything meant movie star, rock star, doctor, pilot, fashion designer or ballerina, no secret agent or even CEO. I wanted to be a philosopher even before I knew what one was. I just wanted to be left alone so I could think. I knew I was special. I am special. I just have to wait to show it._

_I'm running through a fog, so thick, so thick. Something's chasing me. I just can't run fast enough. _

_I'm hungry._

Jane slipped in and out of consciousness during her acupuncture session. Little by little, she remembered how she had come to lie on that operating table and how she came to be Veritas. Every needle that slipped under her skin brought her closer too full lucidity. She barely felt them as she hovered groggily but more awake then she had ever been in her life.

The four of them, Jane, her mother, her father, and her sister, would eat dinner together at least once a week. This was supposed to be their time to bond, but her parents would always try to pry into her life and then insist that she needed therapy when she wouldn't indulged their presumptuousness. Instead, she would marvel at how little she had turned out like them. They seemed so... she didn't even know the right word for it. They disgusted her with their close-mindedness and materialism. Even more so, they disgusted her just by being satisfied with the world as it appeared to be.

She could feel herself becoming more like them with every passing year as she lost first her innocence, then her faith, then her mind. She knew her soul was next. Then she would be just like them and every other empty shell that walked this false Earth. She was simply losing herself; she was losing what made her special.

She could feel it strongly that evening as she tried to see green code in her spaghetti and meatballs. She could feel the intricate lines on her fingers and toes melting away as she tried not to listen to her father tell her how she was crazy and how she needed therapy. She almost believed him that time, except her thoughts turned to a boy, a tall, awkward-looking boy, to whom she had never spoken a word. Even so, she felt a connection to him.

He was in her English class where he sat exactly three seats to her left. She had studied his face while he silently read the assignment, "The Whiteness of the Whale," from Moby Dick. From the expression of melancholic wonder on his face, she knew that she didn't have to read the chapter; she could just read him. She read the chapter even so, maybe because the exam wouldn't cover his face or maybe because the way he pressed his lips together told her that some secret on par with the meaning of life could be found on those pages.

_Good and Evil; everything and nothing...the finite and the infinite, ignorance and omniscience..._

_"Call me Ishmael..."_

She wanted to talk to him, but she never quite built up the courage. She'd somehow convinced herself that she didn't have to, that they shared some sort of special bond. She tried to send him psychic messages, asking him to talk to her, to sit next to her, to look at her, to do something, anything, but he never did. So she kept watching him in a melancholy silence until she gave up or lost hope or lost interest. She didn't know exactly what had happened. He faded from her view and from her mind as her attentions turned to her ever-intensifying search for the truth until he was little more than a shadow, little more than the faded remnants of a dream she had lost to a sudden awakening.

_Oh, I just know I'm going to be late. I'll never make it to school on time. If I get another ticket, I'll lose my license. I've slept too long. I've slept too long. I've slept far too long. _

She'd been sleeping far too long.


	4. IV Virtual Bruises

From flat on her back, Veritas could do nothing to prevent Trinity's finishing punch. She scrunched up her face and waited, but all she felt was a gale force wind. She slowly opened her eyes to find that Trinity's fist had stopped a few millimeters from mostly likely causing a painful death for poor Veritas.

"God, you're amazing," she wheezed.

"There isn't one technique I know that you don't."

"Then why can't I beat you?"

"Because you don't know how to use them. You're still holding on to logic. You analyze every move and then try to focus on perfecting it."

"It just feels so weird, not natural, not like me at all. I mean, I don't kick ass. You're awesome for doing it, and I want to be just like you, but kicking ass just isn't me."

"You just need experience until it becomes second nature to you."

"Neo didn't need any experience," Veritas muttered almost bitterly.

"You weren't watching close enough. "

"But isn't it all about freeing your mind and stuff?"

"You're right, but now we're talking about the 'and stuff,' the stuff Morpheus will never tell you. Now, get up and try again."

"Trin, I'm dying here."

Trinity grabbed her arm and pulled. "Get your ass up. Now, hit me."

"I don't think I can."

"But don't you want to?" She twisted Veritas's arm and held it behind her back. "Now get away." With out thinking, Veritas stomped her foot on Trinity's. "Harder."

She stomped again and jerked her head back so that she hit Trinity on the bridge of her nose. Just for good measure, she thrust out her right heel in a turning-back sidekick once her arm had been released, but Trinity caught the kick and, with some skilled joint manipulation, she sent Veritas back to the ground in a crumpled heap.

"You're too slow."

"You're just too damn fast."

"How many times have you seen that movie?"

"Umm, thirteen."

She rolled her eyes. "Don't you remember anything? Now, I'm going to punch you. Don't let me." Veritas knocked away Trinity's fist with a crescent kick. "Now hit me so I can't try again." She raised her foot in a front kick but couldn't reach above Trinity's shoulder. "Why did you stop?"

"I can't reach any higher."

Veritas lifted her arm and blocked the fist that was headed straight for her solar plexus. Trinity then sent another punch to her philtrum, but Veritas deflected it as well.

"Caught you off guard?" Veritas nodded. "So you didn't have time to think about it. Good, don't think about it. No positive, 'I think I can,' bullshit. There should be absolutely no doubt in your mind about how hard or fast or high you can do anything."

"I think I understand."

"You thought you understood after just seeing them movie."

"I know." She almost felt ashamed. She'd actually thought that she could just upload some kicks and punches, jack into the Construct, and actually be as good as Trinity.

She launched another punch, which Veritas deflected with a well placed crescent kicks. With a twist of her hips, she changed it to a side kick. Her heel hit simulated flesh. Encouraged, she threw a jumping turning-back side kick. Trinity caught her foot before she touched the ground and helped her along with a little tug. After Veritas slapped the floor with both her palms, Trinity pressed her bare heel into the young girl's thigh to turn her hip. Still holding her foot, she pressed it and twisted it until Veritas cried out and the breaking of bones could be heard.

"Stop!"

"What am I doing to you?"

"You're killing me!"

"No, try again."

"You're hurting me…God!"

"No, I'm not doing anything to you. I'm asleep, remember?"

Morpheus appeared in the Construct and approached the pair. He leaned over so he could look Veritas in the face. "Listen to me, Veristas. You need to focus." She cried out again. "This isn't real." She clinched her teeth but caught the soft inside of her mouth. She tasted blood. "This isn't real."

"This isn't real," she echoed, her voice sounding a thousand miles away.

"Are you strong?"

"I'm…" She tried to scream, but her voice caught in her throat. _I'm weak! I'm not strong. I'm not Veritas; I'm just Jane…just Jane _She looked up at him from her vulnerable position. "I'm not, but it doesn't matter, does it?"

"No, because this isn't real. You'll have time to be strong later, but for now…"

She said clearly, "For now, I'll just believe."

Trinity released her foot, took her hand, and helped her up. Jane almost collapsed as pain shot through her foot and up her leg. Before she could steady herself, Trinity spun into a perfect roundhouse kick aimed at her head. An arm rose to block it. Morpheus grabbed her from behind, but she threw him over her shoulder and then dropped her knee to the ground to punch him in the face. She stood tall once more, straightened her uniform, and tightened her white belt before offering him her hand.


End file.
